Step 19: Power!

Step 20: Illuminate the Darkness

The Jar Lantern is a contemporary take on the traditional gas lantern. It was inspired by seeing sunlight refract through my glass water bottle one afternoon, and thinking to myself that it was a bit like carrying a jar full of light. This brief moment of illumination sparked something in my mind that made me wonder how I could capture this experience more permanently.

While trying to bottle light may be a fool's task, I could at least try to recreate the sense of magic I had briefly experienced. After mulling over various methods of accomplishing this, I decided to make a jar with an illuminated floating light bulb. The beauty of this seemingly impossible object is that the light bulb has no clear power source, yet it seems so natural and familiar. The Jar Lantern tends to leave people both taken and dumbfounded by its simplicity.

Step 2: Open the Disposable Camera

Step 3: Cut Away the Capacitor and Flash

Discharge the capacitor by bridging the leads with a long screwdriver that you don't care much for. Be careful not to be touching the metal part of the screwdriver while doing this. Once discharged, cut it from the board so that it will not recharge.

Step 9: Prep the Magnet Wire

Step 10: Hack a Camera Flash

Now is time to connect the wires to the board that will power the light.

Solder the first magnet wire to one of the terminals connected to the ground plane.

Solder the other wire to the terminal of the inverting transformer that the diode is connected to.

*** If you are confused, a more hands on way of figuring this out is to use aligator clip jumper cables to connect the battery to the board. The board should now be live, so be careful of high voltages!

Using another cable, connect one of the bulbs leads to ground. Finally, connect a fourth cable to the other battery lead. Briefly touch this wire to various spots on the board until the bulb lights up. Once its lit, you have found the proper connection. ***

Step 19: Power!

Step 20: Illuminate the Darkness

<p>Hi Randofo, Great instructable and excellent work.</p><div><br><div><br><div>Unfortunately,I have been trying to copy this project trying loads of different disposable cameras. when I very carefully cut a brand new working 12 W CFL bulb open it would not light at all. I did get an intact 3.5 LED lamp to light brightly but it's strobing ALL the time at a constant rate (at about 1Hz or slightly less). I can't get it to light continuously no matter where I place the bulb contacts. When I tried another unopened CFL it worked but strobed again, no continuous light. I carefully opened another CFL without breaking the glass. Snipped off the pcb and sanded and paired the 4 wires etc - no joy!I I have tried Kodak, Le Box AgfaFoto Fujifilm etc cameras every which way. Any ideas? I'm in Ireland. Is it possible that all disposable cameras sold in Europe have different circuitry which pulse the high voltage unlike the ones sold in the US? I would have thought that that would be unlikely. <br>I would be most grateful if you could tell me how I can get a CFL to light continuously. Thanks,<br>James<p>Show less</p></div></div></div>

<p>I have no idea. Maybe you need a higher watt CFL?</p><p>This should pretty much be the same as the flash I am using:</p><p><a href="http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/fsh-12/flash-assembly/1.html">http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/fs...</a></p>

<p>Got the circuit working. I just need to find a jar to put it in. Thanks for the clear ible,</p>

<p>is kool but for the cost of all that stuff to buy you can get a led light from rejext shop for $5 .. :) </p>

<p>Very cool</p>

<p>what if i dont have an old camera?</p>

<p>You can use the power supply inside a 3 dollar harbor freight electric fly swatter. Just detach the poly film capacitor.</p>

<p>NO NO NO , you don't need to buy anything. Walk in to your local CVS, Walgreens or whatever. Go to the photo counter and ask them if you can have some of the old disposable cameras that they are getting rid of because you want to use them for a project. Apparently its fairly common. I did this and walked out with a huge bag of at least 40 cameras inside. Once they remove the film they send them out to be recycled.</p>

<p>Those are the disposable cameras, which you can buy just about anywhere for a cheap price. </p><p>An example: </p><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Kodak-Camera-3Pack/dp/B000OFW65I/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1429478231&sr=1-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Kodak-Camera-3Pack/dp/B000OFW65I/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1429478231&amp;sr=1-2</a></p>

<p>One more thing; They're mostly sold in 3 packs or so online, so go to a store to buy individual ones.</p>

thank you for this awesome instructable it took me about 20 min

<p>That is literally the most brilliant twist on this Instructable. I love it.</p>

<p>GOOD JOB, VERY GOOD </p>

<p>This was not hard to build but just a tad frustrating.</p><p>First: My first camera flash didn't work after I disassembled it so I grabbed another and was much more careful. </p><p>Second, I used a high wattage bulb so only half of it lit up. I then doubled the input voltage and voila, It's Alive !!!</p><p>Third: The AA batteries did not last very long so I used 'C' cells (I have tons of them with no devices that use them).</p><p>Fourth: The bulb was too big for standard mason jar openings. I had this short wide mouth jar that would only house the bulb without the electronics and batteries, hence the box.</p><p>It has a nice glow and would be a good sit around and chat light but not very good for reading. I have a low wattage bulb starting to die so I will try again very soon and I plan to make it a solar rechargeable unit.</p><p>Thanks randofo for the inspiration</p>

<p>How long will the batter run the CFL?</p><p>What about using an LED bulb?</p>

<p>No, an LED bulb will not work for this. The technology is completely different. The real purpose of this instructable is to re-purpose a dead CFL where the circuit died but the bulb part is still good. In a CFL bulb the voltage is stepped up (300 volts), in an LED bulb the voltage is stepped down (2 to 3 volts).</p><p>Hope this helps.</p>

The answer to that is a bit complicated, and at the same time not. Ohms law is the answer, but to run those cfl you need a high frequency high voltage and LEDs like low voltage dc, but you can use a joulethief for the LEDs. By theory you could have double battery life on LEDs vs cfl cos cfl have around 50lm/W light output and led can have about 100lm/W.

<p>Cool instructable, thanks for sharing OP. I too am curious to know if an LED bulb would be a better choice in terms of battery runtime...maybe the OP hasn't responded because LED bulbs are more difficult to modify? I really don't know...</p>

<p>Hey Guys, i am having an issue getting the bulb to light. I am an extreme beginner into the electronics world. i have tried two bulbs and two different styles of disposable camera boards. What is the desired voltage at the end of the magnet wires? I place my volt meter across the two wires and i get 295v with one board and 360v when i use the other board. Any ideas what i am missing? is there a special type of CFL i should be using? Any help would is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.</p><p><br></p>

<p>If you could post some pictures we might be able to see something you missed. The only thing that comes to mind at the moment is that the bulbs are bad. If you cracked the seal on the tube it won;t work. What is the voltage when the bulb is connected? I had to use 3 volts to get mine to light.</p>

Search joulethief and look at solar powered garden lights, there you have some nice beginner circuits.

this is no way a project for an extreme beginner. try low voltage leds or timer circuits

could one of those cheap solar yard lights be used to charge the battery during the day? maybe somehow mount the solar panel to the top?

<p>Hey, you stole my idea :) </p><p>I did think of that because I have a few of those lights for just such experiments. The only problem I am having is my light needs 3 volts to light the bulb so it would eat up two solar panels.</p>

Sounds like a good idea! Might as well give it a try and post up your results

<p>Great project and I built one but my bulb doesn't seem to light up all the way. It only lights up the top bar and the rest is dark. Using 1 AA Battery anyone know how to fix?</p>

<p>Thank you for your Instructable. I have tried it <br>using stuff gotten in Japan. It requires some changes from yours to light. I <br>feel your project is wonderful. I would like to introduce yours with these <br>changes to Japanese Instriuctables if you don&rsquo;t mind.</p>

<p>I used a circuit board of FUJI instead of KODAK. And I added 5-step-dimmer to it. The lantern based on yours has been posted to Japanese site of instructables. <br></p><p><a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Battery-Powered-CFL-with-Dimmer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.instructables.com/id/Battery-Powered-CF...</a></p><p>Machine translation of web browser might help you to read it.</p><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CGQ4MUJd6cI" width="500"></iframe></p>

<p>I lookedall over the dollar store for a plastic jar but couldn't find one. I had to use a glass jar with a metal lid, but that wasn't a problem because thee are no wires touching the lid. The only thing I had to purchase was the tiny switch, so it was totally woth it! Also I didn't use the original pcb I just desoldered the transfomer, transistor, and resistor and soldered them together on the transformer. I also didn't use an AA battery holder, to save space I just soldered onto the battery and glued it on the lid.</p>

Can you teach me?<br>

<p>so beautiful!</p>

<p>I can use alternatives to complete it anyway?</p><p>A complete circuit of it?</p>

FugiFilm, sorry<br>

I used a fug film disposable camera and learned that it only puts out about 150 volts. I compensated by using 2 AA 's. Works great, thanks.

<p>Fun project, but you should give a mercury warning. Since you haven't, I will:<br><br>Be careful regarding potential CFL bulb breakage. The mercury danger is real. Mercury poisoning is no fun.<br>The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality refers to this PDF for cleanup instructions. Don't vacuum!<br>Vacuuming spreads the contamination. Read this PDF.<br><a href="http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.energystar.gov/.../down.../Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf</a></p>

<p>If you do not how to do this board</p>

Awesome idea and instructable!

This is a nice instructable. I am going to mak one!

Thanks, awesome idea. I was looking for a nice easy project to do with my son since he's been learning about electronic circuits in school. This will be perfect!

This looks like a great project going to try this sometime with hopefully the same great results you got.

<p>For those who would prefer to make their own circuit board, I found all of the parts here: <a href="http://xenonflashtubes.com/components.html" rel="nofollow">http://xenonflashtubes.com/components.html</a></p><p>All you need is the following:</p><p>1- XFT-5383-1.5v works with just one battery</p><p>1- 2SD882 transistor pin out normally ECB</p><p>1- 1K resistor</p><p>The CFL board I found also had a transformer about the same size so conceivably the round circuit board could be adapted to hold the 300 volt circuit.. If my calculations are correct, I can make one with a CP300H battery that should last about an hour. I can charge it through the base too.</p>

<p>cool, Ill use this and let you know how it works</p>

<p>Wow, that looks awesome!</p>

I enjoyed reading this. I could follow it easily and it provides wonderful base to expand on for future project planning. One of the pictures you posted has you carrying the lantern towards a fence that says unsafe area. It leads me to a question. Does this light qualify as grounded ? If it does it would allow it to be used in a whole slew of environments where an ungrounded light of this type could not be used.

<p>Nice instructable- recycling old stuff and as a useful standby light during power outages. Will definitely will try. Thanks</p>

For extending the time you have light with the lamp, you could use multiple AA battery's in parallel for more miliamps

<p>Mission accomplished! I managed to find a circuit small enough to put inside of the base and put it all back together. The bulb now runs from a AA battery hooked to the AC socket base. It uses about 230 ma when on. </p><p>Beware of the other transformer. When the picture button is pressed with the flash charged it can create over 1000 volts to charge up the flash bulb. The plate wire is often out in the open so disconnect the battery and discharge the capacitor before proceeding further. The voltage will not kill you, but impacts with nearby objects could!</p><p>Anyhow, here is a picture and a link to the entire process:</p><p><a href="http://petesqbsite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3817" rel="nofollow">http://petesqbsite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&amp;t=...</a></p>

<p>have an idea instead of that circuits maybe use some discharge or died cfl and deposed the casing not the parts inside because can be extra parts and ... put inside the led in the cfl filament and just put some hot glue or industrialized super glue!!!!! and the circuits...........secret!!!!!!!!!!!! hahaha its much more last longer that the cfl with a filament and most efficient at all!!!!!</p>